Mountain Dew
by dutchbuffy2305
Summary: Post NFA, very post, Spike and Buffy find themselves in an out of the way spot to avert the latest apocalypse. There's been water under the bridge, and the bridge not often crossed...
1. Chapter 1

**Mountain Dew 1?**

_Author: dutchbuffy2305, aka db2305_

_Story note: 10 years post-NFA_

_Rating: M_

_Betaed_ _by: mommanerd and thedeadlyhook_

_Feedback: I never tire of it! _

**---------------------------**

Buffy takes off her fleece-lined cap, loosens her scarf and turns her face into the sun. It isn't sensible at this height, even with the thick white sun block she's put on and which makes her look so charmingly white-faced and greasy, but right now, when the sun finally clears the Black Mountains across the valley, is the best moment of her day. The fierce rays thaw her aching bones and stiff cheeks, just for a quarter of an hour.

Her posture, hunched over the hot, so-called tea in her mittens, slowly loosens. Jesus, the nights get cold. And they are long, even in Midsummer, because the mountain peaks possessively block out most of the sky. Buffy walks up and down bit, grimacing as she forces herself to drink the hot suje, the salty tea of Bhutan. Brrrr. But she has to drink. At first, the Sherpas kept forcing tea on her, and when she refused to drink the disgusting stuff, boiled water. She's grudgingly given in, because hey, Sherpa. They know their jobs, and even a Slayer body has to adjust to a height of 12,000 feet. Vampires don't.

She yawns. Time for bed. She crawls into her tent, but before she closes the flap she casts a glance over at the wooden hut in the lee of the rocky outcrop. Its occupant is long asleep. The Sherpas watch over them both by day, but now they're putting butter in their tea and making flatbread and soup in the hot morning sun. Every evening she wakes up hoping that their superstitious fear has stayed put and that nobody has gotten it in his tiny brain to torch the cabin. She hopes they know their lives depend on the presence of two champions at Midsummer.

---------------------------

Buffy doesn't sleep well. The thin air gives her endless dreams of drowning, choking, being buried alive. She breaks her nails on coffin lining, the Master pushes her face down in shallow water, Angelus chokes her on a bed of red roses. In the evening, when she wakes up with her tent red-tinged by the setting sun, she has a hard time remembering which things really happened and which ones didn't.

---------------------------

The days are long and there is nothing to do. No TV or internet, duh, but also no walks to take, no magazines to read, nothing. The Sherpas told her to take it easy the first week, and Buffy laughed at that, because hey, a Slayer, she can do anything. But she's been short of breath, dizzy, queasy, cranky and headachy for a week. She sleeps, day and night, or dozes, and is bored like a boredy thing from hell for ten days straight. The first morning she wakes up with a clear head is like being reborn. The sky is grey, tinged with lilac, the air's so cold her breath steams, and she crawls from her tent in her stinky sweats and does nothing but breathe for minutes on end. There is a smell in the air really isn't a smell;, it is the purity of emptiness, of being the first living being to breathe it in. The groaning glacier far beneath the camp curls around the mountain's haunches, striped like a much-used runway. Maybe flying demons land there.

She turns her head and finds Spike's eyes on her. Dawn hasn't quite arrived yet, so he can stand outside with impunity, but in minutes he will have to withdraw to his wooden cabin, hastily but painstakingly lined with aluminum blankets to keep every last sliver of sun out. Spike doesn't have mountain sickness, but his movements are even more circumscribed than hers on this cramped mountain ledge, a hundred yards wide, two hundred deep. They were schlepped up here by the Sherpas, trussed up like rolled chicken roasts, because the mountain craft needed to get them this high isn't gained in a day or two on a climbing wall in South London.

---------------------------

For the first time in weeks, Spike sees Buffy looking out of her eyes, the real Buffy, the Slayer who he used to love. Up until now, she was a harried sick woman who didn't even resemble anyone he knew. He puts up his hand, and she waggles hers in greeting.

"Welcome to Bhutan, Buffy."

"Glad you're here, Spike. Has anything happened?"

"Not a bloody thing, Slayer. You waking up is the highlight of my day."

A little color tinges her cheeks. He hadn't meant it as the mild flirting it sounds like, but if she's flattered, he'll pretend he did mean it.

The first finger of dawn touches the edge of the abyss in front of them.

Spike shrugs. "Gotta say goodbye, now, Slayer."

Buffy's eyes are on the lightening sky. At the last moment she turns and calls out to him, "Are you okay in that cabin?"

"Got a truckle bed and a blanket, and light to read by. What more does a man need?"

---------------------------

He doesn't look very Spike-like here, dressed in army winter gear, a hat just like hers, lined with fleece, with earflaps and mouth flaps. On the lower slopes of the mountain, he wore a watch cap, so she doesn't even know if his hair is still platinum. She hasn't asked. Only his voice is like the voice she remembers.

Spike gets inside and she hears him turn the lock. There goes the only person she can talk to up here. There is one Sherpa who has knows some English, but he's not inclined to small talk, and even if he were, what would they talk about? Fashion? She's shown Jigme, the head-Sherpa, Aura's photo, and he showed her a picture with seven little black heads on it. Jigme kissed it solemnly and said, "They important, me no important," and she could totally identify with that, because when Aura was small she was grateful for an undisturbed visit to the toilet and her first uninterrupted cup of coffee was like a party. So that was a nice moment, but it isn't not something you can repeat every day.

---------------------------

Buffy jogs around the ledge. At first by day, but when she's completely acclimatized, and Midsummer approaches, she starts sleeping during the daylight hours so she can keep watch by night. Now she jogs in the early evening. Spike accompanies her. Their laps are short, and hindered by the cabin, her tent, the Sherpas' tents, the Ladies room and the Men's Room, and also assorted rocks and gullies. Their tempo is not high. What Buffy can see of Spike's face looks relaxed, almost empty.

"So how you been since LA?" she asks. It's kind of embarrassing that she's asking this three weeks into their mission, but her head's been full of other things up until now. Her daughter, left in Dawn's care, because Steve, the asshole, couldn't take her for two months straight. He said. Her lack of stamina, after years of occasional slaying. Boredom, pain in her feet, lack of coffee. No excuse, really.

Spike looks thoughtful. "Alright," he answers after a whole lap has passed.

Buffy waits for another lap and then she can't stand it anymore. "Yeah? That's it? Give me little more to work with, here. What does all alright mean? Does it mean fine, or great, or so-so, or nothing at all happened to you, or you don't wanna talk about it?"

She gasps for breath after that and she sees Spike's smile flash in the flickering, fire-lit night. The Sherpas think they are insane to jog around the plateau in near darkness. No street lighting here.

"All of the above," Spike says, and she knows from the tone of his voice he's taking the piss, a British idiom she's gotten to know intimately.

She'd like to kick him, that's how angry she is, and she hasn't regressed like that in years. Okay. She doesn't know why he's so reticent, and or why he doesn't talk her ears off like he used to., or Mmaybe that's because the things he used to say to her wouldn't be appropriate.

"Okay, here goes. Buffy moved to London in 2007. She meets Steve and they get married. Aura is born in 2009 and is now seven years old. Steve left us two years ago. I've been working with Andrew and Willow on and off. Not because I wanted to, but because any other job I tried sucked. And I suck at jobs. So I'm still the Slayer, the oldest, wrinkliest, saggiest Slayer in history. And for some peculiar reason, although you've been working with Andrew and Willow too, we've never ever encountered each other. Was that coincidence or did you try real hard to stay out of my way?"

Spike says nothing. The occasional flashes of his face that Buffy sees as they pass the corner fires tell her nothing. She's thinking there is a big heavy reason for his avoidiness. Otherwise, if it meant nothing, he would know what to say. Does she really want to know that reason, or would she rather leave it undisturbed? She doesn't know. It's not narcissistic to think it's got something to do with her, right?

---------------------------

The Slayer jogs next to Spike, panting too hard for their leisurely tempo, still not completely adjusted to the altitude. It worries him. Only a few days to go and it'll be Midsummer. When they'll both have to be at their best and most alert, because Andrew hasn't been able to tell them exactly what they'll be up against. Spike's thought about her question all day, lying in his silver-lined crinkly nest, sleeping a little, rereading Pablo Neruda by the arc light that both illuminates and heats his six by five abode. Is it politeness that makes her ask? At least she volunteered her own life summary, which is not nothing on the scale of Buffy forthcomingness. Thinking about this is like picking at an old scar, because you think there might still be a little bit of glass imbedded in your flesh. Is it worth the trouble and the pus and the pain to open the long healed scab up and dig into yourself on the off chance that you will find something?

"I lost all my friends when LA slid into the sea," he says, surprising himself as well as the Slayer.

"Thank God Hollywood survives," Buffy lobs back, and trips over a rock. She's flat out on her face. She unerringly finds his hand in the darkness and hauls herself up. "Sorry, Spike. I don't know why I said that. I'm sorry for your loss."

The formal words don't mean a whole lot to him. It's been ten years, after all, and he knew the LA Gang for less than a year.

"Who are your friends now?" she asks in a subdued little voice when they jog on. She does him the courtesy of supposing he does have friends.

"See a bit of Andrew when I'm in town," he says. "Got my mates all over the world, don't I? Willow, Dawn. People you don't know. Demons. Clem."

"That sounds nice."

They're silent after that.

---------------------------

Buffy still hasn't asked Spike what color his hair is, and she really wants to know. Their attempts at conversation don't feel right to her. Stilted, overly polite. Like strangers on a train. That is not how she wants to talk to him, but she doesn't seem to be able to find another way. Why is it so hard? They may not be friends anymore, but they've been in constant company for weeks now. There should be some kind of cordial working relationship. Buffy winces as her brain produces these words. She's glad she hasn't said them out loud. She can just imagine Spike's scoffing at them. Working side by side. Feelings develop. Of friendship, of course, what else?

The sun burns hard on the plateau and she's hiding in her tent. She should be sleeping, but instead she's trying to get herself off. Her tent is surrounded by Sherpa tents, and she can hear them talking and walking around a couple of feet away from her. It doesn't feel particularly private, even if they can't see her, but she's been fizzing with suppressed lust for days now, and she hasn't had an orgasm since the start of the mission. Too fricking scared to try, and too embarrassed to bring her vibe. The batteries would have run out, anyway, but most of all she didn't want the Sherpas or Spike to see it. Is she a grown woman comfortable with her sexuality or not? Okay, not. She rubs herself, licks her fingers when she doesn't get wet soon enough. Jesus, she's been at it for twenty minutes already and she just can't relax enough to get off. She should just admit she's afraid Spike is awake and that he can tell what she's doing, at a distance of hundred feet, just from her heartbeat.

---------------------------

The sky is the pale gray of early morning and Spike goes off to his cabin. "Sleep well, Buffy," he says. "I'll be listening to some really loud Punk music on my earphones and then put my earplugs in when I go to sleep."

Buffy's face burns. She hates him so much. But anger is a wonderful way to warm a person up, and she's not as stiff as usual after her morning cup of rancid chai. She crawls into her down-filled sleeping tube bag and lies there, simmering with mortification. Spike did know what she was up to. And she can't be sure he was telling the truth, can she? Maybe he's listening in on her right now. She comes, hard and sudden, and bites on the sleeping bag to still her mewling. At least Spike can't read her mind; he doesn't know she was thinking of him thinking of her alone in his bunk. What would Spike be doing right now? Her hand steals back to her clit. Just one more and then she will sleep. Hey, how come Spike's Ipod's still running?

---------------------------

The Slayer crawls out of her tent, staggering and waving from sleepiness. Her face is pale and puffy, her hair a greasy mess. She yawns without covering her mouth and loudly does her business behind a couple of rocks, also known as the Ladies' Room. She's not the fresh-faced girl of ten years ago, and there's a little waddle in her gait that was never there before. Childbirth, Spike assumes. They've hardly ever spoken in the intervening years, but does that mean there are things unsaid? Spike has no idea. He's awake before she is, kindling the morning fire in near-darkness so he can watch her undignified and intensely Buffy way of waking up, inhale her sleepy unwashed Buffy smell. He felt his heart squeeze when she showed him the photo of her daughter. He jerks off when he hears her heart quicken in arousal, he in his silver cabin, she in her tent, with a hundred feet between them. He doesn't think it means anything, though. Otherwise, he would have looked her up long ago.

He holds out a mug to her and happily waits for her to make her yuk-face. She does make it, right on cue. Her nose wrinkles, her eyes disappear and her cheeks quiver with the force of her bwooarghlll.

It's not as cute as when she was twenty, because the skin of her face is loosening a bit and the first signs of crow's feet fan out from the corners of her eyes. Spike doesn't care. It was never her youth or beauty that mattered to him.

She dips her nose into the battered tin mug and inhales deeply. "Spike! I smell coffee. Is this actually really real coffee?"

"It is, Buffy. Drink up before it gets cold."

Buffy closes her eyes, turns her face into the red sunlight, red as blood, and slurps down her first swallow of too hot coffee. Spike moved heaven and earth to get the Sherpas to bring some from the nearest town, 50 miles as the crow flies, and a week's travel over the mountain pathways.

"Oooh. I died and went back to heaven." Her eyes snap open. "Is it tonight? Is the coffee to prepare me for tonight? I thought tomorrow?"

"Andrew radioed in this afternoon. Did you know he spoke Dzonghka? Anyway, both days are equally long, although Midsummer is supposed to be tomorrow night. He says to be ready in any case."

Buffy throws a look over her shoulder in the direction of the cave, and he follows her gaze. The tunnel entrance is hidden in plain view on a rock face that is in deep shadow 364 days of the year, and that's where it's going to happen tonight. Or tomorrow.

---------------------------

When she gets back to civilization, when this is over, she's gonna stay in a hot bath for, like, a week. This evening her bath is a battered tin pan that the Sherpas also use to boil water, but she makes do. Nobody here to complain about her lack of hygiene. She washes her face with the precious cup of water allotted for that, and furtively scrubs her pits and her crotch. It's not that she doesn't appreciate Spike waiting for her with coffee, actual coffee, which is like the best present ever, but she vividly remembers the acuity of his nose and that is just embarrassing. She's stinky Buffy these days, and the Sherpas are stinky Sherpas, and the only one who doesn't smell off anything except wood smoke and buttered chai is Spike, with his clean, hard, cool white flesh. And a woman who thinks of her colleague in those terms is clearly in trouble. Even the washcloth feels sexy right now. Focus, Buffy. You're in danger. And how would Spike know if her heart beats from lust or from alertness, huh? He can't.

But Buffy takes a vow to stay away from innuendo and keep her brain clear of lustful thoughts. She doesn't want to give Spike the impression she's that girl she once was. She'd never use him for sex again and she really means that, even if, you know, her pussy has other plans. Buffy has tried calling her pussy her cunt when she's talking to herself, but even in the privacy of her own mind, that's one bridge too far.


	2. Chapter 2

**Mountain Dew 2?**

_Author: dutchbuffy2305, aka db2305_

_Story note: 10 years post-NFA_

_Rating: M_

_Betaed_ _by: mommanerd and thedeadlyhook_

_Feedback: I never tire of it! _

#2

After Buffy has devoured her joyless breakfast – Spike heats his blood furtively and drinks it inside his aluminum foil cabin, so as not to alarm the Sherpas – they hunch over the fire and discuss tactics for tonight. To douse the fires or not to douse the fires, that's the question. Andrew's been so vague about the exact shape of the impending evil event, that it's almost impossible to take precautions. They decide to keep one fire burning, in the middle of the plateau, and station themselves on either end, so that they can take advantage of the light or a burning brand if they need to. They lay out the arsenal the Sherpas lugged up; swords, lances, axes, crossbows, stakes, flamethrowers, holy water, amulets, poison darts, portable spells, arc lights rigged to the small generator, plastic sheets for asphyxiation, cords for strangulation, nets for the unkillable, a sonic weapon and ear protectors .– Spike has never had occasion to use most of them, and he doubts that he will now. When in a tight spot, he tends to use the fists and fangs he's most comfortable with, and maybe a sword or two.

He nudges a peculiar hybrid object, a cross between an axe and a scythe. "That still the original The Axe?"

"Yep," Buffy says.

"Use it often?"

"Nah. Most demons respond pretty well to ordinary axes. But I thought I'd bring it, just in case."

"Yeah. Never know what might work, eh? Not expecting Turok Han, that's for sure."

"Me neither. Something pretty big, though."

"Yeah. Maybe we should have brought stilts. Or Andrew should have sent taller heroes."

Buffy grins. "I knew I shouldn't have thrown away those platform shoes in 2007."

There's a little hiccup behind his breastbone at this comradely look of hers. They're cool. They can do this together. It's been a while since they last fought as a team, but Spike's got every confidence that it will be like always. Seamless cooperation. As long as it's physical, they've always dealt well together.

Spike rises from his crouch and holds out his hand to Buffy. "Shall we?"

"Shall we what?" Buffy says, but accepts his hand and steps across the fire to his side.

"Dunno. Take our positions? Or maybe inspect the crime scene to be?"

"Sure. I wanna have a good poke -around in that cave anyway, in case we have to fight inside it. If they come out of there."

"Andrew says either out of the cave or from the sky into the cave, ancient manuscripts bollocksed up as per usual."

Spike trains his flashlight on the entrance of the cave. It lights on sharp rock teeth and smooth rock gums where the teeth have broken off. In the weak beam of the flashlight both shine reddish, like old blood. It doesn't have a nice level floor like movie caves, with the occasional stalactite or stalagmite for color. It's not made out of mashed paper or foam, either. It's all jagged spears of rock crowding in on them as they clamber over and under, and have to stop after a dozen feet in or so, as the cave mouth narrows to a sphincter leading down into the mountain. Big enough to throw a baby through, maybe, but that's about it. Nothing really big and scary could come out of it, but you never know with demons. Maybe it's a portal from another dimension on Midsummer. They just don't know.

This is a night of heightened alertness, so the Sherpas are also awake and Buffy and Spike traverse the ledge even more times than when they're doing their so-called jogging. It's boring. The temperature drops to below zero, the stars glitter hard and inimical from their peepholes in the sky, her hands are only warm if she's more or less putting them in the fire.

At one point Spike says he has to show her something.

"What?" she says, numbed by cold and inaction.

"I have a letter from Andrew I'm supposed to show you midnight sharp before Midsummer. Sorry."

His voice sounds sincere. It's hard to judge a person in darkness with them wearing thick camouflage caps and mufflers and eye protectors.

"I don't think I can read by firelight," Buffy says, a little snippily.

"My cabin has good lighting," Spike says, apologetically, which always raises her hackles. She doesn't like him apologetic, it brings back memories.

Why has Andrew given the letter to Spike and not to her, huh? It's not fair to give him the advantage. Who's the senior operative here? Hm. Maybe it's Spike. It is entirely possible Andrew likes and respects Spike more than her, the senior Slayer. Buffy promises herself to be professional. Act like she hasn't just been hurt and rejected. That little creep.

Spike lets her into his cabin, for the first time ever since she helped staple the aluminum foil into place. The flashlight, and later the arc light reflect thousands of times into the alternately smooth and creased foil, and maybe this is what popcorn feels like before it pops. The wind sneaks in through the gaps between the rough planks and rustles the sheets of foil with a tinny sound that Buffy feels in her fillings.

Spike digs into his backpack, which seems to contain only black clothes. He finds an envelope. Before he can open it, Buffy says impulsively. "Take off your cap?"

"What? Whatever for, Slayer?"

He must feel defensive. Because he never calls her Slayer anymore.

"Because. It's hard to talk to someone….I just want to see the color of your hair," Buffy says.

Spike utters a mini-raspberry of surprise.

Buffy waits.

Spike doesn't move.

At last, he shrugs, opens up the hat's Velcro fastenings and takes it off. His hair is mussed, showing an inch of outgrowth, but is still very platinum.

Buffy's smile stretches to her ears, and she wants to reel it in but she just can't stop smiling. "Cool. It's still bleached. I was hoping it was, you know?"

Spike looks away from her and puts his cap back on. "If I'd known you took a keen interest in my hair color I'd have sent you a memo," he says gruffly.

"Don't be a grumpy old man. I like it that you haven't changed that, at least."

"You mean I changed everything else?"

"Well, yeah. You have a soul, and you're a hero, and you're this cool adventurer guy who gets to travel all over the world and stamp out evil. What's not to envy?"

For the first time in days, he looks into her eyes. Or maybe he does it all the time, but it's hard to tell under all the gear. His eyes are as silver as the aluminum foil. The effect is to make him more inhuman, pale and cold and perfect in his silver palace.

"Envy. Buffy the Vampire Slayer envies me?"

"Is that so strange?"

"Well, excuse me, yeah." He says 'Yea -huh". With a big emphasis on the yea. "Don't want to bring up old memories that are best buried, but that's not what you thought about me. And what the bloody hell is keeping you from living that exact same life?"

Buffy shrugs. "Apart from Aura? Nevermind. Let's just concentrate on Andrew's letter. For all we know, the world is ending while we're here bickering."

"We're not bloody bickering! You said…"

Buffy leaves Spike in his hall of mirrors. She's not doing this. Not getting angry at him, ever again.

Bugger. She's run out and they haven't read Andrew's letter.

What the hell does she mean, wanting to see his hair? Christ, he should have stuck to his guns when Andrew first asked him to take on a mission with Buffy. He can think of several mates of his who would have thought this trip a great lark. Then he'd have been spared the bloody wrenching memories and the scent and her heart beating all the time. His dreams are only of her, and he hasn't been like that in years. Fucking years. Girlfriend after girlfriend. Happy.

She can stew in her own petty anger for all he cares. Stupid bint.

Buffy sits by the fire, her butt cold as ice, and tries to sulk. For some reason sulking isn't easy in this mountain perch. The clean, pure dry air, and the faint fluting rumble of the glacier below, simply waft her sulkiness out of her and what remains is a faint sadness. Regret might be a better word. Might-have-beens and if-onlys chase each other between stacks of dusty memories.

"Sorry about that, Buff. I'll read it to you."

"Okay." Several heartbeats. "I'm sorry I blew up. I don't usually have a temper like that. Something here is making me antsy."

Right, something is making her antsy. Spike reckons it's him. Not to be all swollen-headed, but her endless masturbating keeps him awake for hours on end. But. He's not Giles, to ignore his Slayer's intuitions until she fires him. Could be something her honed Slayer senses are picking up.

He fishes the letter from his pocket and starts skimming the contents.

"No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio

o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:

tea mo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,

secretamente, entra la sombra y el alma."

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose…" Has Andrew gone bonkers? This is one of the poems he read last night, albeit in translation, but his Spanish is good enough to recognize it.

"What it is?" Buffy demands impatiently. "You look funny."

"Don't I always?" he answers, absorbed by the riddle.

"No. You're very…What's it say?"

"It's a poem."

"Oh. And after that?"

"Nothing. Not even a signature. What the hell did Andrew mean by it?"

And how come he'd been reading this very poem this afternoon, dreaming of Buffy, pretending he wasn't, even to himself? Did Andrew know that he's always carried the Neruda poems with him on missions, the past five years or so? Those poets that can't, read, he supposes.

"Let's radio him."

"He'll be asleep," Buffy says, but she's already on her way to the radio and its designated Sherpa.

The radio isn't working. It's supposed to withstand everything cell phones can't, even if there was any kind of reception up here, but it's silent, wheezing out the song of empty airwaves. Not a snatch of music or the Tibetan resistance groups they usually receive before they find Andrew's call sign in Thimphu.

"Bugger." The sky is pinking to their left.

"I'll try again around noon, Spike," Buffy says, putting her mitt on the sleeve of his thick parka. Spike wishes he could feel her hand on his skin instead. "I was going to have a look at that cave again, anyway."

"Ta. G'nite, Buff."

"G'nite, Spike."

Her eyes are locked on his nape like laser beams. He shouldn't fear sniper Cupid, although his heart's not armor-plated. He was first shot a long time ago, and there's no such thing as double indemnity in love.

Buffy performs her morning ritual of tea-slurping and stretching. She crawls into her sun-warmed bed and tries to sleep. She's gotta be at peak alertness tonight. Be able to fight whatever's coming at them.

Seven perfect relaxation exercises later, sleep has not come. Whatever made her snap at Spike for no good reason still travels along her nerves, shrieking and shaking her limbs like the Chicago El. She counts to one thousand. Her limbs are motionless and heavy, and by all rights, she should be long asleep. Spike's head on the pillow below her, his eyes black with longing, looking up at her in utter trust, his mouth soft and pink beneath her lips. This time she strangles him until his face is blue and his tongue lolls out. The necklace of skulls around her neck jangles against her black, shellacked skin.

The thing that she's sure is in her, around her, debrides her nerves. They must be lying bare like stripped copper wire by now.

Buffy sits up. She's a Slayer, and her body is telling her something. It's almost noon on her watch. So she did sleep? She doesn't remember sleeping or dreaming. The sleeping bag has become twisted around her legs in a spiral, as if she's walked up a staircase winding like the whorls of a shell. She fights free of it. She dresses, painstakingly, although her fingers jitter and her heartbeat is telling her she's in a hurry.

Outside all is silent and still. The air is like boiling chicken stock, yellow, salty, with pockets of liquid superheated fat that sting her eyes and halt her step. Where are the Sherpas? They are not sitting gossiping around their little fire as usual, preparing that ghastly chili and cheese dish they like so much. The sun has found the cave entrance and its black rocky rim is now red and shiny with heat.

A sound behind her makes her wheel around sharply. She's instantly dizzy and spreads her arms like a tightrope walker to keep standing. Squinting her eyes tight against the sun's hostile glare, she sees the world on top of the world spread out before her. Row upon row of dun and black mountains, bald and distrustful, glaring at her reproachfully or giving her the cold shoulder. A lone bird circles up on an almost visible column of hot air. For a second, it floats over the glacier's racing stripes and then plummets down with a raucous cry.

Released by the death scream of the bird, Buffy's hold on her own balance slips and she falls down, pole-axed. She lies spread-eagled on the harsh, bumpy rock, her eyes tearing up with pain, and that saves her as the sun's prying copper fingers attempt to fry her brain.

She is the center of the world. It wheels around her, ponderous and vast, on the imaginary but intensely painful and tangible axis rammed through her sternum. Ages pass, and her only defense is to blink and produce tears. The heat of the sun warms the seam of her thick padded pants and it's almost as if….She wants to squirm, get her ass out of the sun. The soles of her feet are so firmly planted on the earth, why can't she move? Why aren't the Sherpas rushing out to help her?

She melts and runs like wax and it pools on the rock, hot enough to bake an egg, and she's gonna bake, split open like a cake baking too fast, so the sun can get at her soft gooey interior and lick her out.

She urgently needs saving and she should be able to save herself but she can't move, helplessly pinned as she is under the sun's stern gaze; feminine, open, powerless, forced to accept his glare and his gifts.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Mountain Dew 3/?**

_Author: dutchbuffy2305, aka db2305_

_Story note: Post-NFA, very post, Spike and Buffy find themselves in an out-of-the-way spot to avert the latest pocalypse._

_There's been water __under_ _the bridge, and the bridge __not_ _often_ _crossed_

_Rating: M_

_Betaed_ _by: mommanerd and thedeadlyhook_

_Feedback: I never tire of it!_

Her face is cool. Buffy's eyes snap open, her rational brain tells them not to, you can sear your eyes by looking straight at the sun for a second, but she's safe. The spike of rock that hides the Ladies' Room from plain sight is sheltering her face. It's a narrow shadow, and she won't have long to gather her steaming thoughts, cool them down and save herself. She can move. Carefully she rolls her whole body into the shadow of the rock and debates. Will she make it to Spike's cabin? It the most likely place to protect her from the malignant sulfur pustule in the sky.

Wake Spike first. "Spike!" she yells. "Help! Spike!"

She waits. Precious seconds tick by. Finally a cautious voice sounds. "Slayer?"

"Open the door! I'm coming!"

Buffy turns on her feet like a cat and sprints for the door. It's like a hundred feet or so. Still too far. Halfway through, the light hammers down on her skull and splits her thoughts open like a grape. Her feet forget what they were doing and she stumbles down, headlong, her arms reaching for something, for nothing.

The Slayer is going down. Bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Spike rips one of the foil blankets from its staples and flings himself into the day's maw, which is quivering with heat and malice. As he reaches for her hands, his burst into flame. No time to worry about that, he clasps her to his chest and they stumble back. The sun scorches his bare heels and sets fire to his pants.

They fall into the cabin and Spike kicks the door shut with one flaming foot. The blanket douses the smoldering bits of him with hissing and crinkling noises. Buffy sits up, clearly recovered from whatever hit her out there. She takes his hands into hers, cooler than his at the moment, but that will pass, of course.

"Thanks, Spike. Your poor hands."

"Not a problem, Buffy. Hands will heal soon enough." He pokes his feet, but they're not too bad. His thermal long johns have gaping holes on the calves where they've melted away. "What happened out there, love?"

That slipped out. He doesn't think she noticed.

"The sun got to me. I fell over, and I couldn't move, and it was sort of…" She's blushing, or maybe it's a sunburn? Whatever it is, she finds it hard to get the words out. "Warming me up. Getting me all hot and ready for something."

She meets his eyes, determined to be adult about this. His scent memory informs him that, yes, she was all creamy and juicy when he held her in his arms. His bloody tackle stands up eagerly with this thought, and it's fucking embarrassing when you're wearing stretchy underpants instead of trusty stiff jeans that hide a multitude of sins.

He shrugs. "Sorry."

"That's okay. I can't help it either."

Right. They're adults. Stuff happens, and they can be cool and professional about it.

"You think it's got something to do with tonight?"

Buffy's still stroking his hands, pink flesh now appearing beneath the flaking blackness. They're incredibly sensitive and his cock won't go down.

"Has to. Trying to disable me. The Sherpas didn't help me. Maybe they've run off?"

"Let me check."

It isn't easy to stand up in his condition. The rub of the cloth against his boner as he moves is making it worse. A little moan escapes from his lips.

"Are you okay?" Buffy asks.

"My feet," he lies. "It's nothing." At least she's not touching him now.

He walks to the peephole he's made in the aluminum and through the wooden planks, with a clear view of the Sherpa tents and fires.

"Have a look, lo…Buffy."

Buffy stands on tiptoes, disturbingly close, disturbingly closer when she needs him to help keep her balance. The Sherpas have plastered themselves in the shadow of a narrow overhang, and they're not going to make it through the day in there. One of them, Jigme, Spike thinks, lies supine, crucified by the baleful eye of the sun, his eyes open and staring. Dead, or in best case, blind and crazy.

It's torture to stand this close to Spike, to not look at the straining bulge in his thermals. Buffy's determined not to give in. That would be wrong, because it wouldn't be them. It would be the magic making them crazy. The sun was blaring down at her, trying to pry open her eyes to get at her soft squishy brain and cook it like porridge. Porridge is gross and she needs actual brains to think, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Why are they standing here again? Oops, yeah, Sherpas. A good little Slayer would go out and rescue them, but she can't. She's not going to lie there again, legs open to that thing in the sky. The only thing her legs will open for is Spike. If she were going there, and she's not.

His hand is resting on the shiny foil wall, large and pale. It has shiny pink patches on it and around those patches a flaking, blackened edge. Her eyes are so close to it that she can see the pores on the unblemished parts of creamy skin, the short light brown hairs that cover the back of the hand and the first digits, some of them short and crispened. She could blow on those hairs, she's that close. Spike's nails are pink and shiny, and his manicure has held out up better than hers. What is the world coming to if guys like Spike have manicures, huh?

Buffy lifts up her own hand, heavier than it's ever been before and turns Spike's hand over. She needs to see the inside. Even the palm of his hand is a different color than hers, pinker. The pad of the thumb is thick and fleshy, and she'd like to put her teeth in it. The lines and creases on his palm, what story do they tell? She knows nothing about palmistry (palmology?) but she traces the thickest, deepest line from the outside to the base of his third finger. Spike doesn't move his hand while she's doing this, but it trembles ever so slightly beneath her fingers. He has calluses at the base of his fingers, much like hers, a little orangey, from handling all those weapons. She strokes his middle finger upwards, intrigued by the smoothness and softness after the harder, rougher callus. Then there's the tip of the finger, twice as wide as her forefinger. Does that mean it's twice as sensitive?

Spike starts talking to her in a hoarse voice, so close to her ear her spine arches from the sound of his voice. The place beneath the ear is the most sensitive place spot on her whole body, or at least it is right now. She doesn't understand his words, something about salt and roses, shadows and souls. He used to talk to her just like that when they were fucking. It's as if she can feel the rough concrete of his crypt walls under her fingers again, and he's moving in and out of her, too slow, torturing her, preventing her from coming because she needs it hard and fast, and all the time that awed voice goes one and on and says beautiful incomprehensible things that she refuses to hear or understand. He should say dirty, nasty things to her, demean her, abuse her, but instead he's delivering these lines in a suddenly plummy voice and she just can't parse it.

Buffy blinks and the aluminum crinkles a little under her sweaty cheeks. She's not in the crypt, that's all in the past, over and done with, forgiven, forgotten, only it isn't quite like that. Spike leans heavily against her, his whole body flush with hers. A quick check downwards confirms that she's still fully dressed in all her winter gear, and he's still in the thermal pants. That explains the sweating, then.

She can't keep ignoring what is going on. There is going to have to be actual communication on the subject.

"Something out there is doing something to us, Spike," she says, the words sandpaper gobbets in her throat. It's not quite as decisive a communiqué as she'd hoped it would be.

Spike understands. "I know," he moans in her neck, and his hands have snuck around her waist.

"I can't…"

"Can't what?"

Can't stop, can't go on, don't want to have anything to do with you ever again? She needs more info.

"Can't keep myself from feeling like this. I know it's wrong," he pants.

Not so much wrong as inopportune, Buffy thinks. They've got a job to do. This horny spell is preventing them from doing it.

"Yeah. Not now. Not here. We've got to resist."

Spike grabs her shoulders, which makes her waist feel lonely and rejected and turns her around so she can look into his face. Her nipples grab that opportunity to commune intensely with his bare chest. It's a miracle they can sense anything through her five layers of thermal clothing, which must be two inches thick over her chest. She hopes her nipples haven't grown that long.

Spike's eyes keep flicking down over her body, but there's nothing to see but her thick Helly Hansen Arctic jacket. She pulls down her fleece inner collar, so he can at least see her lips.

"Not now? Not here? When, then and where?"

"Later. After. When we're back," she murmurs against his cheek. Hmmm, cheek of Spike.

"What time is it?" Spike whispers.

Oh. Spike is pulling away from her, apparently regaining control. Buffy tries not to let her disappointment show. She peels back her jacket from her wrist, rolls up outer fleece, inner fleece and thermal vest, and there it is, her special clunky mission watch. With stopwatch function and everything.

The hands stand at exactly twelve o'clock. "Noon," she says. "Funny."

Spike falls back against her. She knew it. She knew he couldn't be feeling any lessening of the Spike-Buffy gravity effect. Or maybe the Spike-Buffy gravy effect, because her panties are soaked. Which is so not fun if you haven't seen a washing machine in weeks, and you'd actually welcome a nice babbling brook to beat your clothes in with your bare hands.

Spike sniffs, and Buffy blushes deeper. She hopes beet suits her. "I'm sorry," she mumbles.

"No, you smell like heaven, love. It's just – doesn't feel like noon. Feels like later. That watch run alright?"

"Well, yeah, it's like this major brand special watch that Andrew bought for the mission especially. He could hardly part from it."

"Mmmm."

He really shouldn't say 'Mmmm' like that when his lips are so close to her neck. They set off a reverberation in Buffy that is centered suspiciously low in her body and is accompanied by clenching, shuddering and involuntary eye-closing. If she wasn't sort of past feeling anything but lust she'd have been embarrassed.

Spike clenches his jaws, which makes interesting hollows beneath his cheekbones. "Maybe the sun has made it stop?"

Yeah, sure, maybe. Something's doing something to them, and it has to be connected to the thing Andrew has sent them out to fight. There are too many things in that sentence, and yes, the sun has damaged her speech center and left the lust-center up and running, which is, like, her lot.

Spike's muscles are paralyzed, and the organs in his body that have no muscles are stiff and motionless. The combination leaves a lot to be desired, but at least he can't act on his baser impulses. He doesn't do that on a mission, because he's not The Bloody, Spike the Bloody, to fuck every female enemy agent that crosses his path. Maybe if he could cross his legs it wouldn't be so bad.

Buffy is trembling and twitching in his arms and he wishes she would stop, because although his control is awesome, at some point he's definitely going to soil his thermal underwear, God bless its quick-drying polypropylene.

"Spike…" Buffy sighs against him. "My legs. I need to lie down."

His lower body spasms a little at the thought of lying down. He's forgotten why it is so urgent not to give in to the lust that hangs tangibly in the air. Working together, feelings develop? No, that's been done to death. He's going to wring Andrew's skinny little chicken neck when they get back. This is a conspiracy. Something magical is going on, connected to the Summer Solstice, no doubt. Why Buffy? Why him? Male, female, ritual marriage, sacrifices. Yeah, you could call what's happened to poor Jigme a sacrifice, and Buffy and he have celebrated the joining of man and woman many times over. Buffy, fertile female, Spike, dead infertile male. Andrew sending him the Pablo Neruda love poem. He knows in his gut these are the building blocks of an explanation of what is happening here, but they're not matching up to a complete puzzle yet.

And Andrew might be a skinny little nerd, who still thinks Counselor Troi and Commander Riker are a match made in heaven, but he's also the frighteningly competent and ruthless Head of Council. And Spike's friend. Admirer, too. He wouldn't set him up, unless he thought it was for his own good. Spike is going to resent that as soon as he's figured out what exactly he's been set up for.

Buffy's still talking and pushing weakly against him. Hm, nice. His cock pushes back and they're getting a serious rhythm going.

"Spike, bed, now!" she says from between clenched teeth and he obeys that voice, he can't not.  
They stagger to the truckle bed and collapse onto it. It holds, miraculously. Buffy groans in relief as her tired muscles let go and her warm, slack weight on his chest is his idea of paradise. Her Buffy scent is quadrupled after all those weeks with bathing in a pan and he doesn't mind a bit. His hands burrow mindlessly under her clothes, healing burns be damned, until he touches moist hot skin. Yes!

Buffy sits up and stares wildly down at him. She flings off her hat and starts ripping off her jacket. The zippers and Velcro fastenings fire off like farts.

Buffy gives up halfway, yanks his pants down and grabs his dick with both hands. "Spike! Why are we fighting this?"

Spike's last sensible thoughts fly to all corners of his brain and he tries futilely to grab after them. "Because. It's. It's."

He can't find the words but he frees his poor confused dick, which is getting all ready to fire, by clasping her hands between his. "No. We're not going to do this. We're stronger than this."

Buffy shakes her head. "I'm not. I'm weak. You have to punish me. Hard. You know where."

"I am strong," he says. "Repeat after me."

TBC


End file.
